Lola Shoneyin and Maimouna Jallow for Nairobi

Lola Shoneyin and Maimouna Jallow are the featured guests for Goethe Nairobi series, Artistic Encounters. They will be at the Maendeleo House on June 15, 2017.

Artists Encounteric, a collaboration between Goethe Kenya and author Zukiswa Wanner, features different types of artists on one stage at the same time. The concept has already had two events thus far this year. It is started with Nigerian artists and writer Victor Ehikhamenor collaborating with South African poet Koleka Putuma in February. That event was very well received by the Nairobi lovers of art and poetry. This was followed by South African German poet Philipp Khabo Koepsell collaborating with trumpeter Christine Kamau in April.

Next week the, latest and possibly greatest running of Artistic Encounters will happen yet again at the Maendeleo House with Lola Shoneyin and Maimouna Jallow. Lola Shoneyin is African literary royalty as poet and writer with her one fiction title to date being The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. She is one of the ubiquitous Africa39 that pop up in many African literary discussions. She captured the imagination when she set up the Ake Arts & Book Festival in 2013 which has in a short time, become one a major go-to literary festival on the continent.

Maïmouna Jallow is a writer, journalist and performer. She has also worked as a producer and reporter for the BBC World Service and later managed Regional Communications for Medécins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Horn of Africa region. She has made a name for herself in recent times for her adaptation of beloved African books for the stage. On Thursday, she will be doing an adaptation of Lola Shoneyin’s novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi for stage.

Apart from their showing at the Goethe, Lola will be making an appearance at the Prestige Bookshop on Mama Ngina Street in Nairobi for a book signing. That signing will happen on Friday June 16 from 5-7pm.